I want to say “It’s always a good day when I can talk about Star Wars,” but that’s not always true. Loving something means acknowledging its flaws, and it’s pretty safe to say that Star Wars as a franchise has a racism problem, from the lack of the BIPOC characters in its movies (and accession to stereotypes when they were depicted), to the racist harassment that that BIPOC actors in recent shows have faced from certain sections of the fandom. While the franchise has taken steps to address these issues in recent years, it’s still got work to do–and if it doesn’t, fans are more than willing to call it out.
This exact thing happened in 2021, with the release of The Bad Batch. This show follows a group of clones (soldiers born and bred specifically to fight for the Galactic Republic, introduced in the Prequel Trilogy) known as “The Bad Batch” as they try to find their place in the galaxy during the Empire’s rise. Each member of the The Bad Batch had “desirable mutations” that made them even more lethal than your average clone. They'd been introduced in the last season of popular series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and many fans were eager to see them in their own show.
But there was a problem. All of the clones are based on Maori actor Temuera Morrison, and the clones in both the Prequel Trilogy and the early seasons of the The Clone Wars largely depicted his skin tone accurately. As the first trailers for The Bad Batch premiered, however, fans quickly noticed that the squad’s skin tone seemed unusually light–markedly different from Morrison himself. Note the title image in this blog–the left image depicts clone characters in The Clone Wars, whereas the right depicts the Batch in their titular show. In fact, the Batch weren’t the only characters to suffer from this change. In the first episode, Star Wars: Rebels character Kanan Jarrus makes a cameo as his younger self. Here’s how he looks in Rebels (left) versus The Bad Batch (right):
Fan anger at this inexplicable skin lightening soon grew into its own movement, leading to a social media campaign on both Twitter and Tumblr centered around the hashtag #UnwhitewashTheBadBatch (often shortened to #UnwhitewashTBB). Fans used this hashtag to highlight the various issues the show had–take this tweet expressing skepticism that the Batch’s “desirable mutations” would somehow justify lightening their skin tone. The hashtag was eventually used as a basis for a Twitter account dedicated to pointing out the racist implications the show promoted. This account’s profile picture notably contains an edited picture of clone character Echo, whose skin color is far lighter in the show. Echo’s features are more emaciated than other clones because he suffered torture after being captured by enemy forces, but many fans didn’t see how this justified drastically lightening his skin tone–I remember seeing quite a few comments on when he’d finally “get his melanin back.”
The hashtag started sparking conversations across social media–people were beginning to take notice. Take this conversation on Tumblr (Warning: some expletives are present in this post) which uses an anonymous ask about the controversy to discuss how the creators used The Bad Batch’s (troublingly altered) appearances, rather than their personalities, to try and distinguish them (a big point of The Clone Wars was that all clones had distinct personalities despite looking the same). While I can understand the Batch’s physical appearances being slightly altered due to their mutations, it doesn’t quite explain why their skin tone would suddenly lighten.
This petition about unwhitewashing Star Wars in general provides some great information on the #UnwhitewashTheBadBatch, with many comments from fans about how the whitewashed depiction of their favorite characters made them feel disrespected and marginalized. Notably, the campaign actually grew large enough that Brad Rau, the show’s director, responded to the accusations, noting that the team would take steps to ensure that the clones’ skin tones were accurately represented in Season 2. Not everyone was satisfied with his response. This post expresses skepticism in LucasFilm’s attention to accurately representing BIPOC characters in the first place, and notes that the character models Rau promises the team will use to “make corrections” are themselves outdated and whitewashed.
While there’s still a lot of work to be done in this area, I thought this was a great example of how social media can be used to hold creators accountable. It’s a bit of a shame, though, that it falls on social media users to call organizations out when they fail to meet diversity and equity standards. At the same time, it’s also a great example of the standards organizations should be expected to meet–if you’re failing to meet these standards, your audience can and should call you out for it.
Hi Kristen, thanks for this awesome post! I think it's great that social media can bring people together on DEI issues, but I agree that it sucks that ordinary people have to remind creators to meet these standards. Even if the creator's response wasn't ideal, the fact that he saw it is a great reminder that ordinary people can use their voices to create change. I also like your honesty and transparency about loving something but acknowledging its flaws. I think we'd all be better off if we had that attitude instead of immediately jumping to the defense of something without seeing a different POV.
ReplyDeleteThank you! As someone who's loved Star Wars for years, I've seen a lot of comments accusing people who rightfully criticize certain choices the movies/shows/etc make of being "haters." It's similar to how some people will say "if you hate your country so much, just leave it!!" when someone points out a flaw in a country's social/economic/political system. But intentional bad actors aside (and god knows there's a lot of them when it comes to outrage-baiting grifters, though I admit my own bias against them here), many people point out these flaws precisely because they love Star Wars and what its characters mean to them, and want it to see it be better. Social media is the easiest and often most efficient way for people to be vocal about how certain practices can be hurtful to them, and to share their experiences. I do appreciate that it a userbase can an excellent "check" on organizations to ensure they're meeting the standards they should, even if it shouldn't fall on them to do so!
DeleteI about tripped over myself running to comment on this post when I saw the Bad Batch photo lol
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the Clone Wars series, but I'm not yet caught up to watching the Bad Batch. Star Wars, like many other fandoms, has it's good and it's.. less good fans. I recall a smaller group back in the day calling out Star Wars for their racist depictions (particularly the Neimoidians) that so many other fans seemed unbothered by. So it was definitely good to see more fans in recent years pushing for positive change in the franchise.
It's also been so interesting to see social media having a major effect on movies and TV recently. The first that comes to mind is the Sonic movie, which redesigned Sonic after the internet called out how.. wrong he looked. More recently, people called out the upcoming Shrek movie, which also just did not look right. While there is no confirmation that they are "fixing" the design of the movie, shortly after the oddly animated trailer was released, the release date was mysteriously pushed by about 6 months.
While not all of these internet campaigns are necessary or popular, they certainly can have a positive impact. By making Star Wars less racist, or making Sonic look less like a monster, the internet and social media can really push for change moving forward.
LOL, so glad to meet another animated SW fan in the wild! It's funny that you bring up the Neimoidians, since I had them as a specific example in mind when speaking about the racist depiction of alien characters in SW, who are sometimes coded as BIPOC. The evolution of social media has made it far easier to reach out to people who feel similarly upset about these depictions, especially with the prevalence of hashtags. I know there's a ton of old Star Wars forums out there, and I imagine it would be more difficult to find them if you weren't specifically looking for them, which means that people were more entrapped in "echo chambers" that discarded valid criticism. With how interconnected people are now, it's a lot easier to get eyes on these issues and unite formerly disparate social groups.
DeleteI remember the Sonic controversy! Things like that and Shrek seem indicative of an interesting trend nowadays, in which organizations are very attuned to what their social media audience is saying. While I think this can be a good thing (especially in Sonic's case!), it does make me wonder if social media audiences are necessarily representative of an entire userbase. After all, if people don't have a problem with a certain issue, they simply won't comment on it, whereas a small number of people who do will elevate the issue online. To that end, I've seen people try to promote positive discussion of shows online, so that organizations can see that loud minorities aren't representative of a fanbase as a whole. I believe this happened with the Acolyte show...perhaps I'll speak about that in a future blog post!